


Giving Up

by notcrazyipromise



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Jealous!Dan, Jealousy, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Original Characters - Freeform, but it can be scarring for little ones, no onscreen sex though, poor phil for having to take his shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-01 22:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13304847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcrazyipromise/pseuds/notcrazyipromise
Summary: Dan drives Phil's friends away and melds their lives together based on jealousy but Phil puts up with it throughout the years until one of them gives up.





	Giving Up

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so I'm actually quite proud of this one so if you wouldn't mind giving me constructive feedback on it I would be grateful forever.   
> TW: mentions of cheating

“Can’t you see?” He screamed at me. “I love you,” he repeated. “I love you.” 

Over and over again, like he was trying to hypnotize me. His voice slowly got more and more broken and faded away until the blustering, jealous six foot tall man was just a sobbing nineteen-year-old crumpled in my bedsheets. I reached over and smoothed his rampant curls off his face and wiped his nose with a tissue. 

“I know,” I whispered. “I love you too.” But I wasn’t him. I couldn’t get away with what he does. And I couldn’t take his crap lying down either. 

“It’s not good, I know that,” came a muffled murmur from underneath my pillow. He halfheartedly pounded the pillow with his loosely clenched fist. “I don’t want to, and I hate it, but I can’t help feeling…” His voice cut off, and I sighed. 

“Feeling jealous.” He finished. Then, almost apologetically, “And scaring your friends away. And being a dick to Stephen. And, and…”

“It’s okay,” I cut in, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay, and I hated myself for needing to lie to Dan to soothe him, because it hurt him too, in the long run. But I kept lying to him, though Stephen never called me anymore and Jacob didn’t reply to my messages and Alice avoided me when I saw her in the supermarket. 

“Just try to not do that again, okay?”

“Yeah.”

It was my twenty-fifth birthday the next time Dan and I fought about the same thing. He never made good on his promise to stop his behavior, but I made good on my promise to myself to stop listening to him. I invited Stephen to my small celebration—which I insisted was a celebration though Dan jokingly teased me about getting old—though he and I hadn’t communicated in a few months, and he graciously accepted.   
He turned up with a new haircut, and new build, and a new girl. Dan seemed fairly satisfied that Stephen had a girl with him, and though I never asked him if it was because she was a girl or because Stephen seemed genuinely in love with her. 

But that didn’t stop Stephen from sitting next to me when I blew out the birthday candles, from whispering in my ear thoughts he should have kept to himself, and from pulling me to the balcony to have a ‘little chat’. I accepted because I thought he had something to say, but when he started the conversation with “Dan doesn’t know we’re here, does he?” I turned around and went back to the living room. Dan noticed, of course, and moments later it was Dan and Stephen having a ‘little talk’ on the balcony. I was too drunk to care, but not drunk enough to be oblivious. 

That night, Dan was more possessive than passionate, and I spoke to him again about meddling in my friendships with other people. But this time, he clammed up and went to his room to sleep. I stayed up working, and not until the crack of dawn did the relentless pacing in the next room cease. I didn’t sleep that night, and neither, I suspected, did Dan. 

But we ignored that night and healed around that wound without mentioning it.

The next time was when we went out to eat with a few friends, almost three years after. It was Jackie’s birthday, and I brought a wrapped box of chocolates for her, with a note “Happy Birthday with love” on it. I knew Dan saw, and I knew he disapproved, but I had given up on caring. But when she kissed me on the cheek in happiness and hugged me tightly after a few glasses of wine, Dan had it. In the parking lot after, he blew up.

“You were flirting with her in front of my goddamn face! You think you have guts to do that? Why don’t you just invite her over to my house and fuck her right there on the breakfast bar? And I’m not supposed to care, like hell I’m not supposed to care!”

“Dan-”

“Don’t you remember, you looooovveee her? So much you give her the chocolates which you bought for my twenty-fourth? I guess that means nothing to you now that you found another toy.”

“It’s a different box.” My last defence against his wrath: meaningless sentences that managed to take away some of his angry words. 

“Same meaning.”

I struggled to think of something that would convince Dan. 

“I’m really gay?” 

It came out as a pathetic question, but it was better than nothing. But all he did was snort in his disbelieving way. 

“I’m sure Janice definitely had a dick.” As an afterthought, he added, “but had balls enough to date you cheating man whore.”

I rolled my eyes and started the ignition. The engine of my car started and Dan put his seat belt on. 

“You done?”

“Nope.”

It was our eighth year together and when I was turning thirty that I realized it might be a problem that he wasn’t done. We became relatively successful entrepreneurs and business partners after he and I both lost our jobs. We owned a nice apartment in the suburbs of Los Angeles. We were talking about adopting a dog. We went traveling around the world sometimes. 

The problem was the persistent, ever encompassing “we”. “We” had friends; I didn’t. “We” went to work; I didn’t. “We” visited family; I didn’t. I wasn’t sick of it, on the contrary, I felt like I could do this forever, but I spent long sleepless nights wondering why and how Dan had turned us into Siamese twins. That somehow had sex constantly and talked about marriage. 

Dan didn’t mind. He enforced the behavior constantly, implying a ‘we’ at every personal pronoun relating to me or him in any way. So I let him. It worked for him. It worked for his parents, who really just wanted to hand the responsibility of making sure he didn’t die to someone. It worked for my parents, who just wanted to see me settle down and get hitched. And it worked for me. I loved routine, and with Dan, everything was predictable. He woke up late. He knew how to make my coffee the way I liked. He did his part of work admirably efficiently and well. He knew what turned me on and what didn’t. He knew when I needed a hug, and when I wanted to be alone. He knew just how to massage my head to drive my migraines away. He knew when I felt particularly hungry and he knew what I liked to eat. He knew how to fake my signature for when he accidentally took my wallet instead of his to buy groceries. He knew how much dairy I could have before my allergies started acting up. 

So why the nagging thought at the back of my mind telling me that maybe I shouldn’t be okay with this?

There weren’t any more arguments about it, though, and I could never figure out which one of us gave up.


End file.
